Banking Fraud Is Just the New Way of Doing Business

bigbenThe manipulation of the LIBOR scandal just keeps growing. Ever since Barclays was busted for manipulating this key critical interbank interest rate, more outrageous details keep pouring out.

Europe wants to make such evil financial dealings criminal. Yes, that's right, already manipulating a key interest rate is being classified as not criminal by this announcement.

Europe's top regulatory official intends to propose new rules that would criminalize the manipulation of benchmarks such as Libor.

Other investigations are also being announced:

The U.K. Serious Fraud Office opened a criminal probe into the attempted rigging of interest rates that led to a record fine against Barclays Plc (BARC), adding to pressure on banks already under investigation by regulators around the globe.

Supposedly the U.S. opened a criminal probe in February 2012:

Several major global banks, including Citigroup Inc, HSBC Holdings Plc, Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc and UBS AG, have disclosed that they have been approached by authorities investigating how Libor is set.

No bank or trader has been criminally charged in the Libor probes. It wasn't clear which banks or traders the Justice Department is targeting in its criminal probe.

Most interesting considering the Bank of England is now implicated in LIBOR manipulation complicity as we previously mentioned.

The memo says that, since the bank has spent three years and £100m in its efforts to “ensure that no stone has been left unturned” in its investigation of the Libor scandal, “it is ironic that there has been such an intense focus on Barclays alone”. On the next page Barclays makes its devastating move that shifts the spotlight. The heading reads simply: 29 October 2008 Communication from the Bank of England. At this point, Barclays has already made it clear that the Bank made the first move, not Barclays.

Repeating the point, the memo states that “Bob Diamond received a call from Paul Tucker, Deputy Governor of the Bank of England” which he then reproduced in an email to John Varley, then chief executive. In the email, dated 14:19 on 30 October 2008, Diamond said Tucker had told him about Government fears about Barclays’ high Libor submissions.

The email finishes: “Mr Tucker stated the levels of calls he was receiving from Whitehall were 'senior’ and that while he was certain we did not need advice, that it did not always need to be the case that we appeared as high as we have recently.”

While Great Britain's Economic and Financial Chancellor George Osbourne said:

    Fraud is a crime in ordinary business — why shouldn’t it be so in banking?

The truth has emerged he is fighting for banking executive big bonuses instead.

George Osborne is preparing to defend the right of British banks to pay large bonuses against EU plans to cap the pay-outs, it emerged last night.

Of course the Bank of England's chief deputy officer is defending their central bank and claiming not to be involved in Liborgate:

E-mails released by the Bank of England before Mr. Tucker’s testimony revealed that senior British officials were worried about banks’ access to the financial markets in the aftermath of the collapse of Lehman Brothers.

“We are [very] concerned that U.S. rates are tumbling but we remain stuck,” Jeremy Heywood, a senior British civil servant, told Mr. Tucker in an e-mail on Oct. 22, 2008.

Mr. Tucker also was in almost daily contact with senior Barclays executives during the final weeks of October, 2008, according to the documents.

Yet the New York Times asks what isn't America getting tough on banks as if the U.K. really is. Buried in the New York Times piece is this fascinating factoid (along with word of the day, imbroglio):

Prices of derivatives, especially credit default swaps that trade one-to-one, can still be based on one dealer’s say-so. That’s why a rule proposed by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission that would require pretrade price transparency in the swaps market is so important.

But it is also why Wall Street is pushing back, especially on the commission’s proposal that swap execution facilities provide market participants, before they buy or sell, with easily accessible prices on “a centralized electronic screen.” The commission’s rule would eliminate the one-to-one dealings by telephone that are so lucrative to traders and so expensive to investors.

A bill intended to gut the commission’s proposed rule and to maintain dealers’ profits in derivatives failed to go anywhere after being passed last year by two committees in the House of Representatives — Financial Services and Agriculture. That was a good thing.

But there are rumblings in Washington that this bill has resurfaced and that it may be quietly attached to a House Agriculture Committee appropriations bill scheduled for a vote this month. The bill, if passed, would bar the requirement for a centralized pricing platform to shed light on the enormous swaps market. It would also prevent regulators from requiring that a number of participants provide price quotations to customers, a way to ensure fairness.

In other words, while Liborgate rages on, quietly our government officials, Congress, are busy trying to cut an important financial reform on derivatives. Lovely.

Even Matt Taibbi has high hopes America will wake up.

When the rest of this scandal comes out, and it turns out that up to 15 more of the world's biggest banks (including Chase, Bank of America, and Citi) were doing the same thing as Barclays, our regulators better start "inflecting their eyebrows" pretty damn vigorously. Because if it comes out that these other banks were all involved with this scandal (and it will come out that way, almost for sure), and their CEOs and COOs get to keep their jobs, that'll be a sure sign that the fix is in. Let's hope Ben Bernanke, Eric Holder, and Tim Geithner are listening.

We're sorry Matt, the holy trinity of Geithner, Holder and Bernanke are listening, and laughing all the way. There is no way they will do anything. After all Holder has make a point to not criminally pursue the Banks, in spite of whatever press release claims or probe is announced.

We'll see, but odds on this scandal, along with all of the past ones, will simply be diffused, action delayed until the Banksters and their evil cohorts believe no longer is anybody paying attention. Corporations simply run out the clock on scandals as a strategy. Like most night creatures, once the spotlight is off, we can bank on the financial sector will be business as usual. That includes their contagion creating, inside trading, mega loss generating, nation hostage taking derivatives markets.

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Comments

And business is good (for the criminals)!

DOJ? SEC? Congress? State AGs? FINRA? Ha ha ha! Jokers all! Capone + Escobar wish they owned the govt. and enforcers like banksters and CEOs do. Capone and Escobar probably had more shame than these clowns. "Best and brightest, best and brightest" - makes me throw up everytime I hear a shill spout that trash.

One of my major beefs for years has been hedge funds, one of the major symptoms of this economic rape of the hoi polloi. Every public servant is forced to participate in these scams through "no fault of their own." They are not for rich idiot billionaires and their trophy wives and drooling children only who couldn't figure out how where a BRIC country is if you had a map composed of only Brazil, Russia, India, and China. So, you work fighting corruption as a local or state member of law enforcement that actually cares about the 99%. But lo and behold, some idiot hedge fund manager gets to take your money because the bought-and-paid for state level execs (including AGs and Governors) are okay forcing pensions to invest in them with managers that cannot beat a Vanguard index fund ever (especially after fees are included) taking 2% of all assets under management and 20% of profits. The people that are clued in to this crap cannot opt out and, despite writing repeatedly to the people investing the money + AGs, they are ignored because they are not that important to the 1%, it's only the 99%er's money after all enriching the 1%. And this isn't bashed within a minute of inception as complete garbage that pillages public servants? Hmmm, I wonder why. Because these deals are made at cocktail parties and secret clubs that George Carlin's unwashed masses will never be invited to - we ain't in them. Until hedge funds are treated like the thieving schemes they are and managers treated as social pariahs + fraudsters for being the epitome of leeches that get rich for literally losing to the market, we will continue to see the destruction of America's middle class.

And I know this matter has been brought to the AGs' and pension administrators' attention repeatedly - and been blown off - so many of us out here are aware, we do care, but we are utterly powerless to stop the rape and theft when the criminals control all of the power. So what's a law-abiding citizen to do? When the systems is completely owned by criminals and crushing the law-abiding citizenry, F THE SYSTEM, ITS PUPPETS, AND ITS PUPPETMASTERS.

And now the Senate will hold its own kabuki theater on LIBOR

The Senate now is joining the fun to show just how useless, corrupt, and clueless it is in regulation and enforcement. Hey, if the UK can pretend to do something, so can the US Govt.! Everyone gets a turn at shadow boxing, kabuki theater, and puppet plays. It's just like one of their after-hours gatherings at Davos or a summer BBQ in the Hamptons or on the GA. or ME. coast, only without the open exchange of "gifts."
Prepare for more 20-minute questions/speeches by bankster-owned Senators, 1000s of phone calls between lobbyists, PR employees, and DOJ+Treasury+ White House Senatorial staff before one word is said publicly, and for the bankster-owned MSM to play stupid (or just be stupid) and go along with yet another charade.
By the way, Peregrine Financial under the CFTC's "watch" had $200 million + "vaporize" while the CFTC didn't do anything. I guess that's another episode of kabuki theater date TBA.
So much to pretend to do, so little time until another useless election to choose more people to get rich by being completely corrupt.
LIBOR. JP Morgan white whale FDIC-backed massive derivative losses in positions that should ideally net $0. Aluminum price manipulation by JPMorgan and Goldman. Oil price manipulation by banksters. Hedge funds making money for losing to the market through exorbitant fees. Silver and gold manipulation. MBS-nightmare (all banksters) that destroyed the US. Cooking Greek books so Greece could enter Euro (GSucks). Banksters rolling in the dough with CEO and political buddies while 22% of Americans cannot find work in their own country. Corzine looting farmers' segregated funds and destroying lives. Etc., etc. Anyone in shackles? Anyone in Rikers or Cook County awaiting a state trial? Anyone in Leavenworth doing time with people that destroyed fewer lives? Anyone suffer criminal and/or civil forfeiture or suffer one day like the average American does in this Depression? Anyone arrested in the US for running a US-headquartered media company that bribed police overseas, hacked thousands of phone accounts, intimidated politicians, interfered with police investigations, etc.? Anyone from WalMart going to prison for bribing officials (I guess bribing a police officer by a regular US citizen in the US would result in no arrest too, right)? No, because the system is now officially a joke.
Party on Corzine, Murdoch, Dimon, Diamond, Blankfein, the public knows you belong in prison, but your paid-for puppets in both parties have no integrity or shame, so it's all good in the banksters' and "job destroyer's" neighborhood.

Kabuki theater - Congressional hearings

That's what I believe will happen. Once this story is off the front pages, we won't heard anything and then 1 year later we'll see some end paragraph blurb about how some reform has been dismantled or delayed. You can get we will see precisely zero criminal charges.

Which reminds me, we're gotten a lot of damning articles from Congressional testimony, but the one constant, no matter how damning that congressional testimony is, it's promptly ignored by Congress.

I mean world leading experts, economists and goes in one ear and out the other of Congress. This is discounting the "invited" Lobbyists, or their corrupted front men, who spew noise at these hearings, they of course should be ignored.

RICO - here is it laid out for all feds and states to ignore

So, let us lay out RICO so that all feds and states can pretend it really isn't this easy. Given the # of unemployed, honest law enforcement folks out there, one wonders why they aren't being hired to go after banksters + corrupt corporations, but then I think that answers itself. How many govt. officials are being paid six-figures to absolutely ignore what an average Joe can see.

****RICO LAID OUT SO ANY SIMPLETON COULD PROSECUTE IT
1) Need at least two incidents of these crimes (we'll just use the ones banksters engage in) -
- bribery (e.g., JPMorgan + Jefferson County);
- counterfeiting (e.g., robosigning on a mass scale);
- fraud (how many counts of wire and mail fraud do these folks engage in daily regarding insider trading, betting against own clients' interests, manipulation of commodities and/or stocks, etc.);
- obstruction of justice (how many emails and docs were destroyed, witnesses and possible whistleblowers fired and/or paid off);
- $ laundering (all of these banks keep settling cases for laundering drug money, + they launder own profits from their own crimes like robosigning and securities fraud)
- securities fraud (e.g., insider trading, lying about material information to investors and potential investors, betting against own clients with inside information)

2) Two acts need to occur within 10 years (no problem there)

PENALTIES - Up to 20 years in federal prison for each racketeering count (and these are real prisons, not fed camps); forfeit all ill-gotten gains AND any interest in business gained through the pattern of racketeering

So, now that it's been laid out, can we see how easy it is? Again, look at what the DOJ and state AGs ignore. See why the FED giving $ to banksters after it knew of LIBOR problems a few years ago is akin to giving money to a criminal gang that breaks heads and torches buildings.
There is no difference, these folks destroy more lives and destroy entire economies while getting obscenely rich and blaming fellow citizens who merely want to work hard and save enough to have something for their families.
They don't get prosecuted because they have willing people and organizations with no integrity who all can be bought and/or rented from localities all the way to the WH, DOJ, Treasury, ECB, IMF, World Bank, UN, etc. So, present and former organized crime members are now running the Treasury, national banks, representing them before assuming roles in DOJ or after leaving DOJ, take their $ before, during, and after working in Congress, etc. "But, but, RICO is hard to prosecute." No, it's really, really not. No harder than any criminal case with tons of written/recorded evidence, predicate crimes already established (e.g., these banks settled many cases), and tens of thousands of witnesses across the globe. But if you refuse to see something and do something, then no amount of prodding or proof will make the corrupt move or get out of the way.

HSBC just confirmed $ launderer - time for RICO prison time

With the confirmation that HSBC was laundering $ by the Senate today, this just adds to the list of confirmed crimes by banksters like American Express, JP Morgan, Wells, and everyone else. So, these banks are all confirmed to have committed multiple counts of multiple crimes within 10 years. It's a giftwrapped package for any lazy prosecutor out there to do something with. Or, perhaps a foreign indictment from Mexico or Colombia or Russia or China for helping criminal activities by foreign criminals. When China wants to go after someone, they really do make an example. A criminal trial overseas and possible execution in China for corruption and/or facilitating drug crimes in C. and S. America would really clear banksters' heads and maybe, just maybe, get them thinking straight. But of course the State Dept., owned by banksters, would step in to protect them.

Thx, money laundering

Events move so swiftly, I am literally writing updates in groups, about every 3 days.

Mexican drug laundering has actually been known for some time and it's just another example of nothing done.

Big Time Money Laundering is by Wall Street Itself

I used to talk to some of the regular guys who worked for BBH. All the insiders at BBH can tell you how the big Wall Street firms all have a diplomatic pouch which gets on the airline everyday and travels to the West Indies, Switzerland and Belgium. The money is often securities and on a no-questions-asked basis.

So I have to wonder about the low-tax crowd. We all know money leaves our shores every day by the carry trade. The one percent have been given privileges and tax preferences which they use to increase the carry trade. The fascinating thing is how this election cycle has so many excellent poster boys for this phenomenon.

Burton Leed

Diplomatic pouch?

How are private banks obtaining diplomatic pouches? Thats a story onto itself.

Look alike Pouches are the trick

Once the TSA boys see what looks like a diplomatic pouch or facsimile, they let it slide. If examined, all they see are stock and bond certificates signed over.

Burton Leed

seems off the wall

I would imagine electronic transfers, manipulated, hidden or even a flash stick with account data or something, not good old fashioned paper "money" on air-o-planes.

Regardless, that's why so many of the post titles here are Mafia, Banksters, run amok, and so on, they are just doing whatever the hell, with impunity and they might, have to fork up a pay to play fine.

I'm going to have some good FMN videos on the latest attempts to get any reforms, regulations through.

U.S Treasury Tracks E-Transfers

Bob, there is a $10k per diem limit on cash This is why couriers are used. Whether by insured air or by personal couriers, securities not cash or even checks are the preferred medium of moving money without detection.

Burton Leed